Teamicide

Incentive Pay Considered Harmful - Joel on Software: "teamicide: the inadvertent destruction of jelled teams"

The cubicle more devastating than the A-bomb?

FORTUNE: Trapped in cubicles - Mar. 9, 2006:

"Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called 'monolithic insanity.'"

Not so many deaths but a life long mental torture for many....

Quote of the day

Quotes of the Day - The Quotations Page: "

'A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment.'

- Willis Player"

Google Writely

Writely Blog:

"Some of you have been worried about our future here at Writely. As one concerned user wrote:

'I love Writely, but... I was wondering, is there any way to send you guys some money? I understand it's free and all, but I just feel bad that you don't charge. Thanks!'

We appreciate the sentiment, and all the support we've gotten from our users, but thankfully, your donations won't be necessary, for one very exciting reason:

Writely is now part of Google!"

Good news - I have a Writely account ( so I can sit smugly whilst others now have to wait to sign-up) and, whilst I haven't used it that much, I really love the idea and look forward to many new improvements - so long as the takeover goes smoothly!

Why Schools Don’t Educate - The Natural Child Project: "We've all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press - a decade long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more 'expert' opinions. Experts in education have never been right, their 'solutions' are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. Enough. Time for a return to Democracy, Individuality, and family."

"All Marketers are Liars" - Seth Godin speaks at Google - Google Video

Bill Clementson highlights Alan Kay quotes

This one made me smile :-)
Bill Clementson's Blog: The Most Important Idea in Computer Science: "'Java and C make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.'"

On the Java theme: Mak Guzdial: Report on OOPSLA97"Java is a great step forward. For the C Community."

Songbird

Looks like a good MP3 player built on Firefox, but don't you just hate sentences like this:Development | Songbirdnest.com: "We plan to keep the vast majority, if not all, of our source code available under a GPL license."

international Development for the naive- open source radio

Open Source: "What does an EHM do for a living? He builds the American empire the way a dope dealer builds a network of dependency. The drugs an EHM sells are aid agency loans to developing countries Â? loans that bind the country to hiring American companies to build the highways or design the power plants. Most of the real benefits therefore stick with American contractors and corportions. The loans, by design, are also too big to repay on time so that the country effectively becomes a pawn the U.S. can use for military or political or economic convenience. And one more thing: these loans enrich a tiny minority in the debtor country (usually including a corrupt head of government) and impoverish the masses by increasing the national debt. Perkins says heÂ?s witnessed this cycle over and over again. He was part of what drives it. .....Does John Perkins’s argument ring true to you? What would you like to ask him? And who should mix it up with Perkins on the air?"

I don't want to pay for this...

BBC NEWS | Health | Drug limits foetal alcohol damage: "A drug may be able to reduce the damage caused to babies whose mothers drink heavily during pregnancy."

Making it stick.: Don't Make Me Think: "Simple dynamic programming languages and simple dynamic coordination languages are winning. Vendors will have to differentiate themselves on something more than wizards that mask complexity."

Humo[u]r

Welcome to RejectionLine.com: "Someone won't leave you alone?

Give them 'your' number: 212-479-7990
The official New York Rejection Line!"

Anyone tried it?

Oh come on it can't be that bad! Can it ? Err, help ?

Google Reader: "If you're an identity management supplier it is time to set up a UK office. If you're already here its time to hire more salesmen and lobbyists. No delays, no excuses. Jump in. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity - practically all upside, with little or no oversight."

Don't read it all unless you are interested in liberty, democracy, your taxes etc.

What is a Web App?

Google Reader: "I never thought I’d see a web app suite that has more system requirements than a desktop app, but I guess I should never underestimate Microsoft."

Skype limits itself

When Intel calls, Skype listens | CNET News.com: "The latest version of Skype's Internet-calling software can host up to 10 users on a conference call, but only if your PC has a dual-core processor from Intel, Skype and Intel announced Wednesday.

Intel's Core Duo and Pentium D processors have been designated the mass conference-calling processor of choice for Skype 2.0, launched last month. The limit will remain at five callers for PCs using single-core chips and Advanced Micro Devices' dual-core Athlon 64 chip, which some tests have shown outperforms Intel's dual-core chip."

What did Skype get from this deal?

Would they have done this deal before they became part of a lartge corporation?

LWN: Putting Ubuntu to the Test

Make the Drake truly Dapper

Paul Graham's On Lisp in HTML

Onlisp:: "Onlisp"

Big media playing safe?

Gary Secondino's OPML blog: Friday, February 10, 2006: "Today was a big news day so I watched this evenings local and network news. What was the reported top story today? Bush's announcement of new details of a thwarted 2002 hijacking plot aimed at a downtown L.A. skyscraper. WTF?"

Then read the list of interesting but unreported items

Chasing ghosts

PBS | I, Cringely . February 2, 2006 - The Walt Within: "'Your friend from the NSA was right, but it's worse than he suggests. It's not just that social network analysis casts a wide net. It's that without oversight by people who really grasp the mathematics and have some distance from the whole thing, they're going to see patterns where there aren't any.

"

Of course, if I were a cynic, I'd suggest that a system which seems to scientifically extract security data could be a useful weapon in the media war. Lucky that I am not a cynic.

Calendar Software: Airset

Joel on Software: "One online calendar I neglected to check out is Airset. Thanks to a couple of alert readers who emailed me, I tried it out tonight. It's much, much better than the proof-of-conceptware that people are hyperventilating about. In fact, it's the first online calendar I've found that seems like it might work for me."

I have taken a quick look ( yes, you do have to register) and it looks good. I need to see what it can do with my Pocket PC

Software Factories - now it's practical!

Jack Greenfield's Blog : Software Factories Applied: "Keith Short, Mauro Regio and I have agreed to write a new book called Software Factories Applied. Our goal is to write a short book for practitioners that complements the theoretical foundation established in the original Software Factories book by showing how to build a software factory using currently available technologies, namely the DSL tools, the Guidance Automation Toolkit and Visual Studio 2005 Team System. "

Moby Quotes - The Quotations Page:

"I had an epiphany a few years ago where I was out at a celebrity party and it suddenly dawned on me that I had yet to meet a celebrity who is as smart and interesting as any of my friends.

Moby, quoted on CNN.com, March 2005"

The must attend conference of the year!

Can't see the deadline for paper submissions but looks like some great talks: I particularly want to hear this one: Waterfall 2006 - International Conference on Sequential Development: "Pair Managing: Two Managers per Programmer by Jim Highsmith"

NHS Analysis

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online:

"Asked to explain how in the midst of plenty the NHS was running out of money, she[Patricia Hewit, Health Secretary] said that there were a variety of reasons.

“In some cases, it is financial mismanagement. In others, it is inefficiently organised services — such as not doing enough operations as day cases, or keeping people in hospital longer than needed.

“In some areas, there are too many services being provided from too many places. In others, the health community has been overspending for a very long time and taking money from other parts of the NHS to balance their books."

OK, so you are saying there are just a variety of different reasons, but then say this.....

“This is very unfair on underspending areas, which tend to be in the North and the Midlands — they are subsidising NHS services in the South and East.”"

Hmm, so perhaps it is not random after all! Let's see, the South and East - most densly populated, highest costs of living....... Sounds like a problem in the system as a whole to me.

Julie Leung: Seedlings & Sprouts: A record-breaking year: "Life isn't easy. Commitment is no cakewalk"

Shirley is coaching

What will coaching do for me?: "It was the perfect time to read again and study Ã?“Getting things doneÃ?”"

Shirley recently left her "regular" job and branched out into coaching. I think she will be good at it based on the workshops she did for us.

Glad to see that GTD is working its way into her repertoire - it will help with the new business and help her clients

Good luck Shirley!!

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "Thanks to PFI, the UK’s hospital building programme is bigger than that of the rest of the G8 nations put together, as health economist Professor Nick Bosanquet has pointed out. Do we need them all?"

Squeak Programming for Kids

From the always interesting Ted Leung on the air: "At Mind Camp, Todd Blanchard brought by a copy of 'Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots', and the girls got excited by paging through it. It looked pretty good, and Squeak/Smalltalk certainly has the programming constructs that I want my kids to be exposed to straight off (at least if they are going to be programmers). Also, one of the original motivations for Smalltalk was for allowing kids to do programming and simulations, and that heritage seems to have carried through into the Squeak community. For a great/depressing look at some of the learning applications, you can check out this video from ETech 2003."

I just bought this book for my nephew - I am waiting to see how he takes to it. My own kids are still resolutely against programming - they obviously see what it has done to me!!

Object Database usage

Starwood checks in with ObjectStore database for reservations - Computerworld: "And Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., the owner and operator of that online reservations system, gives credit in large part to a humble little object database from Progress Software Corporation."

Don't try to own and control everything

Simply Albert: "Things like Barcamp and Torcamp and CESCamp don't 'belong' to anyone. That’s why they work. "

As usual, this is so true and can be applied to so many things. It's great to share even in business!!

Slashdot | Portable OpenOffice.org 2.01 Released: "it's a perfect example of 'the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about selling as many licenses of their work as possible.'"

Lemonodor: Wingo SLIME Review: "The inspector keeps a stack of objects so you can dig down and come back up to where you were. I would kill to have this in Python"

William H. Borah Quotes - The Quotations Page: "The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
[info][add][mail]
William H. Borah"

Bush Leads, Opposition Mewls | Bayosphere: "I rarely agree with Pat Buchanan, but check out the start of his latest column:

Men who believe in something, even if wrong, will triumph over those who believe in nothing. That is the lesson of the Bush recovery of the past four weeks."

Google Reader: "Men who believe in something, even if wrong, will triumph over those who believe in nothing. That is the lesson of the Bush recovery of the past four weeks."

Weblogs Forum - The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts: "We now know that EJB 1 & 2 were based on an entirely flawed set of use cases. Because of the damage this (still slowly dawning) realization has wrought to Sun's reputation, it's hard to know whether EJB3, which probably should have been called something else to disassociate it with the failures of its predecessors, will succeed, despite the fact that EJB3 is like a breath of fresh air. "

Man is this ever true!

Squeak: Squeak: "'Software people tend to favor the joy of complexity,
yet we should strive for the joy of simplicity.'

- Alan Kay"

A fundamental point about life

Why I Am Not A Java Programmer: "The potential for greater good goes right along with the potential for greater evil"

Swimming against the Tide: "It's taken 25 years but we're nearly back there."

Alice Kahn Quotes - The Quotations Page: "For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.

Alice Kahn"

Surprise!

danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: Ag subsidies revealed!!!: "shockingly, countries like France have ignored an EU directive and refused to make their subsidy records available to the public"

Lisp entrepreneur!

Good luck! random-state.net / December 13th 2005: "I've decided to starve.

To accomplish this life-goal and simultaneously bring joy to the world I'm embarking on an entrepreneurial career in early 2006.

The business plan is centered around providing commercial support for Steel Bank Studio, an open source Common Lisp development environment built around SBCL and Slime."

Serious Organised Crime?

BBC NEWS | Politics | Falconer defends new protest law: "Maya Evans, 25, recited the 97 names by the Cenotaph memorial to Britain's war dead in Whitehall, near Downing Street.

She was found guilty of breaking a new law stopping unauthorised protests within half a mile of Parliament.Ms Evans, a vegan cook from Hastings, was given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £100 costs after being found guilty of breaching the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005."

The idea that we take a measure, which is a public order measure, designed to protect our Parliament building as depriving us of freedom of speech is ridiculously overdone

How does stopping someone speaking protect a building ?

Linus does not call users idiots

"Users are Idiots"? - Linux@blogweb.de: "But, to name 'Users' as 'Idiots', well, I never expected to read something like this from you. Because the 'idiots' are using (most of the time) your kernel, and with those statements you are pushing the 'idiots' away from using your kernel."

Someone is either too annoyed to read clearly or their mastery of english not as good as Linus'.

Of course, the anti-Gnome point is there nonetheless. I have only recently started using Gnome with Ubuntu - so far it seems nice. I iss some KDE things but perhaps I just haven't looked for their equivalent yet.

Simtec Electronics - AN0017 - A Programmers Bookshelf: "This book just shows the programmers age. Except for extremely rare cases lisp is no longer seen 'in the wild' of interest only to archaeological students."

Finding Lisp: "Next, focus on the foundational balkanization problems. "

Iraq vs. WW2 France

Philip Greenspun's Weblog:: "So the Germans were able to do a somewhat similar job with 7500 people."

To be fair there were also several German Army Divisions as well - interesting that the quote omits that. Looking at it from our perspective today, though there was some very valiant resistance then, it seems odd that Iraq is so difficult by comparison with WW2 Europe. What are the differences? I would suggest: no religious fanaticism, in Western Europe ( maybe not eastern) the ability to live quite well if you behaved ( and weren't Jewish), little prospect of salvation until 1944, and the certainty of dreadful reprisals from the occupier with no moderation caused by the world's media watching.

From the long-running-but-probably-worth-the-wait-RPG-dept

"The Deryni Adventure Game is on its Way!"

I'm sure it will be worth the wait! Just in time for Xmas (hint).

Lisp Newbie makes good

"All of sudden everything was working within a try or two (and, sometimes, even on the first try), rather than with several attempts and debug sessions."

The new literate programming?

Sean McGrath, CTO, Propylon: "Why not make import statements in programming languages smart enough to recognise zipped XML Office notations when they see them?"

Minority Language Report

OK, a couple of posts rattled my cage today:

• Finding Lisp:

  He sums up with a nice indictment of Common Lisp's freeze-dried-since-1994 state:
  
  Fun Fact about Common Lisp: standard Common Lisp has no networking libraries at all, but it does have a built in function to print integers as Roman numerals , using either the new style (14=XIV) or the old-style (14=XIIII) Roman numerals. Huh.

  
  
• The Geek Guy Rants

  : In the pros department: itÂ's a great programming language. Ruby, python, perl, java can'?t really compete as languages. HTML and symbolic expressions are almost a one-to-one mapping, so generating HTML is a breeze. It'?s great fun to work in, and I'?ve certainly learned a good deal about programming in general just for using it.
  
  Having a Lisp process I can manipulate on a live server has been very handy for updating small changes and debugging as well.
  
  The drawbacks all basically stem from the same problem. Since very few people actually use Lisp, we can'?t take advantage of the tremendous community support the other languages have. There are few libraries, few implementations, and little real-world examples of building large-scale websites in Lisp. The language itself (ANSI Common Lisp) hasn?t changed much since it was standardized, which was about 20 years ago.

  
  

They are right - and I have seen this before: Eiffel and Smalltalk. In both these cases there seems to be a few small vendors and a small but very passionate groups of developers, but too much diversity of effort.

In the Eiffel case, the heavyweight vendor (relative to the minnows) decided to make friends with Microsoft and go it pretty much alone on another round of standardisation. In the Smalltalk arena, some are celebrating the exit of IBM from that segment; again the are several vendors. Squeak is interesting as a nice environment,open source - this could be the future there - or not - who knows.

For both languages, grouping together in the face of competition from other languages would be sensible ; how about a common Open Source base platform with charging for specific add ons, or services (I believe Dolphin Smalltalk pursues its on environment and does services) ?

And what about Lisp? Even more fragmented - why do so many rebuild basic Lisp compilers/interpreters? Are Franz and LispWorks going to thrive by doing it all? Hell, is Lips going to thrive? What would it take to get a 2nd round odf standardisation going, so that Lisp has the range of standard libraries that Java and C# have? Then others could focus on better environments and pushing ahead in more new areas.

Come on guys, don't let the bad guys win!

Phew this ranting is tiring - I'm off for a lie down

John Vlissides, RIP

Grady puts this simply and well:

developWorks: Blogs: Grady Booch: "It is with great sadness that I report the death of John Vlissides who passed away last Thursday, having been diagnosed with brain cancer in early 2004. John was one of the Gang of Four and a brilliant researcher, but above all a kind and gentle man. He will be missed.
"

Software from the Future

Rainer Joswig: "KEE was a very expensive environment for developing expert systems. It had quite a few features that are hard to find even nowadays. It is really from the future."

Oh, those sorts of barriers

Many thanks James Governor for this URL in the comments of my rant on barriers to entry:tecosystems: It's All About Barriers to Entry:

"One of the more common refrains our clients - as well as all of you folks too, I suppose - are hearing from me these days is 'lower your barriers to entry.' The basic premise behind the thought is simple: if one accepts (as I do) Jonathan Schwartz's contention that we've entered the Participation Age, barriers to entry that throttle that participation become a critical concern."

The examples in the post by Stephen O'Grady are more "barriers to participation" than what is conjured up in my MBA-trained mind; perhaps that would be a better phrase? Don't get me wrong, "barriers to entry" could ( logically) refer to the examples Stephen gives, but the phrase is loaded for what i imagine is a large chunk of his audience.

Just a thought!

More barriers being broken

db4objects - native Java and .NET open source object database engine: "'With Version 5, db4objects is pushing the seamless object-oriented development experience even further,' says Stephen O'Grady, senior analyst at Redmonk. 'When developers are not required to transition out of an object oriented environment and the language of their choice, they're likely to be far more productive. Consequently, several vendors - including Microsoft with its LINQ project - are seeking to break down the barriers between non-native APIs and the programming language on top of it, by allowing querying in native language - an approach that could become popular to access databases from OO programming environments.'"

Looks interesting, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be support for the new, intersting, dynamic languages.

Good analysis, interesting terminology

Via a piece of (well-deserved) congratulation of a colleague On MySQL props for Stepho, and Open Source Business models we get the folowing:

tecosystems: Attack of the Open Source Databases: The (Brief) Q&A:

"Well, I hate to say that it's all about barriers to entry, but it's all about barriers to entry"

and this...

Q: So how have the commercial suppliers responded?
A: By reducing one barrier to entry: making or considering making their products free.

Well, if I understnd the point being made, then this isn't how I would use the term "barrier to entry". To me a barrier to entry was something which prevented competition; thus the (high) cost of developing a full-featured relational database was a barrier to entry for MySQL, PostGres etc. But since Open Source development is a disruptive technology it first established a low cost, low function version of the database, and is now performing a segment invasion of the market segment of higher-function databases. Thus the commercial suppliers are not removing a barrier to entry (from this perspective) but responding to a breach of a barrier to entry. If Open Source Databases are a disruptive technology then other issues than function and cost will come into play. For example, the encumbents may not be able to alter their support or channels structure to the new competitive environment.

So, picky, picky, picky (that's me!) ; otherwise an excellent piece. I have enjoyed James' pieces for sometime, but am just getting started with his colleague - keep going, if only to keep me on my (MBA) toes!!

Poor reasoning alert

If you have time and want to wonder at a really poorly constructed argument, take a look at this article:
Why IP owners should worry | Perspectives | CNET News.com:

"It reflects the currently fashionable idea that confiscatory government policy must be used to even the score (whatever that means), thrusting highly demanded, privately risked IP out of the hands of legitimate property owners and into the hands of other, favored actors to further 'develop' it.

A recent court decision in the U.S. (i.e., the Supreme Court's eminent domain decision in Kelo); regulatory and legislative actions in the EU (i.e., the EC's stance on interoperability, and failure by the EU Parliament this summer to pass patent legislation); and rampant piracy, not just in the developing world but here on these shores, buttress this supposition."

See any real connection between the assertion and the evidence cited? Rampant piracy is an example of the sovereignty/IP conflict?

Oh and the article also starts by dragging in the ODF saga, which is a contest betqeen 2 pieces of IP.

BTW I would assert that the Open Source community is also part of the IP community - it just chooses to be more liberal with its IP - and it depends on IP law too. Now file sharing of protected materials is something else, as is the demand to control hardware, infect computers with rootkitspolice everything just in case there is illegal file sharing going on.

Horror - SuSE doesn't run Firefox, so Linux not ready for the desktop!!

Still Looking for a Desktop Linux | Bayosphere: "So I just loaded Novell's SuSE Linux version 10 on my Thinkpad. All went well until I ran the online updates for the OS and various applications on the machine. That's when Firefox started popping up an error message box every time it loaded a new page. Reinstalling Firefox didn't help.

Someday -- maybe someday -- desktop Linux will just work. Not yet."

If the definition of "ready for the desktop" is a single app not working after install, then there is no OS ready for the desktop. I have had the misfortune of reinstalling a few OSs in my time, and they are all subject to problems, often a lot more severe thhan this example. I have to say that Firefox not working, is not a problem I have had ( so far).

CLiki : Exscribe: "Exscribe is a document authoring tool in the spirit of Scribe.

I (Fare Rideau) use Exscribe for all the pages I was writing: unlike most other document authoring systems, Exscribe is programmable: I casually compute content on-the-fly within documents. However, unlike the only widespread programmable document authoring system, namely LaTeX, it's programmable in a decent language, namely Lisp."

Finding Lisp: "You just need to find what people need."

KR Washington Bureau | 11/16/2005 : "In challenging war's critics, administration tinkers with truth"

franklinmint.fm: Jeremy Zawodny, Paul Graham, Lisp, and Yahoo 2.0: "Coincidentally, I've been reading the online version of Paul Graham's book, On Lisp. In it, he makes a convincing case for little languages (or Domain Specific Languages) as a style of programming. You may have heard OOP gurus spouting off about these lately, since they must be quite bored with Java/C#, but also with Python and Ruby. "

Peter Drucker

I missed this one: The Doc Searls Weblog : Saturday, November 12, 2005: "Now I have to add Peter Drucker to the growing list of gurus I always wanted to meet, but never will. He died yesterday in Claremont, California, at 95."

I enjoyed his writings. I recall reading his book "Management" not long after I started work; then the company I worked for got a new Managing Director - he basically worked his way through that book to improve the firm.

Stay at your posts!

Which Lord of the Rings race do you come from? Me, I'm a......

Numenorean


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Time for another photo - Staghorn Sumac in our garden 

Very encouraging!

"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog."

I now have to type in a "Word Verification" for any post; I hate to think what characteristics they mean:-( I would have thought the frequencies of posts would be too low.

Hopefully their human reviewer will see some other characterstics.

ECMDA 2005, Nuremberg

I just got back from attending the ECMDA conference. The city of Nuremberg is lovely ( well, I only saw the centre) - there is a walled city (much of it recently restored) , impressive Churches, and an Imperial palace. Much history - had a bad foot but managed to hop round the town once, but had to miss the official guided tour ( 90 minutes).

The conference was well organised and the conference hotel was very nice. No free wi-fi though:-( Some very interesting papers and workshops, and some not .... as with most conferences.

A good crowd of people, some to meet for the first time, some to meet again, some to meet for the first time face-to-face.

Good fun - looking forward to next years in Bilbao.

What will coaching do for me?: "What will you think if someone says 'you need a coach' !"

Alloy

Alloy Homepage: "The Alloy Analyzer is a tool developed by the Software Design Group for analyzing models written in Alloy, a simple structural modeling language based on first-order logic. The tool can generate instances of invariants, simulate the execution of operations (even those defined implicitly), and check user-specified properties of a model."

Melted Cheese

Melted Cheese.

I love the analogy, and am always keen to see applications of contracts.

What is TDD?

Steve Eichert's Blog - TDD is about design: "I’ve noticed lately that test driven development is now being called test driven design. I think the change is a good one since TDD is really about design, not testing. It just so happens that you end up with some good tests when you do TDD."

When the carer snaps

A very sad situation:Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "Jo Williams, Mencap's Chief Executive said: 'It is hard for anyone to imagine the extent of the caring role that families face. It goes above and beyond what anyone would consider acceptable. But, they do not want praise or rewards - just appropriate help and support to enable them to go on caring.

'We want local authorities to urgently address families' needs; planning services with families themselves, deciding how to spend money on short breaks and monitoring the impact on families. We want the government to do more to monitor what local authorities are doing and to respond to growing demand by putting more money into services.'"

I wonder why this case had to come to court? To even imagine that a custodial sentence was appropriate beggars belief. And why, in a country which spends so much on care, do some people just get left to struggle on alone?

Ted Leung on the Air: Languages and communities: " The culture of a community is a powerful influence on what it chooses to pursue, and the means by which those pursuits are undertaken."

Exploration Through Example: "I think it's because in the Microsoft Research world, we're observers, consumers, secondary participants in an experience someone else has constructed for us. In Alan Kay's vision, we're actors in a world that's actively out there asking us to change it."

Microsoft UK: Earning a place as a national trusted advisor: "

"One of the things that has angered me recently in conversations with IT vendors and at least one standards body about the government's deeply flawed plans is a refusal to show the courage of their convictions. That is - organizations are unwilling to formally criticise current plans by the UK government in case it later impacts their ability to bid for the project.

I call it economic and political cowardice."

Soccer mom no more: " :

" Yes, the soccer season ended Saturday. Ten months until the girls play soccer again."

What? It has only just started - it only stops for 2 months (at most). Next year ( world cup) it won't stop at all!!

Lisp spreading !!

Reader: "I had to install Lisp in a Box and start working through Seibel's new book on Common Lisp until my brain started functioning again."

At least it's not negative !

Groundhog Day: "Loathe though I am to direct more attention to the authority which acknowledges no responsibility, I am pleased that, as of this post, Groundhog Day is 'worth' $0.00."

By a strange coincidence, my blog is worth the same amount!

BTW, I like Groundhog Day - that's my 2 cents :-)

This is a late parrot

Avian flu found in parrot in UK: "A parrot which died in quarantine in the UK has tested positive for avian flu, the government has said."

Well, you may as well go laughing ..... gulp.

Imminent threat?

It is always diffcult to judge from newspaper reports but ....Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "The father of three from Hackney, East London, was shot in the head and hand on September 22, 1999 after a table leg he was carrying in a blue plastic bag was mistaken for a sawn-off shotgun." (My emphasis)

"The CPS has concluded that the prosecution evidence is insufficient to rebut the officers’ assertion that they were acting in self defence. We have also concluded that the threat which they believed they faced made the use of fatal force reasonable in the circumstances as they perceived them."

(My emphasis)

So in the UK, don't where quilted jackets(oh wait, I mean don't wear be Brazilian and where a denim jacket), don't carry things in plastic bags......

I think a large part of the problem is that, since they are normally deal with criminals, the police lose sight of the fact that most people are just going about there normal business.

You say GMail, I say GoogleMail

The BBC has this statement about the on-going dispute of the use of the term "Gmail" in UK and Germany:BBC NEWS | Business | Google drops Gmail address in UK: "For now, though, Google will not be able to promote one of its most high-profile brands in two of Europe's largest economies."

But what sort of "promotion" is Google doing? It seems to be mainly word-of-mouth, so this is not really an issue. Are there any technical limitations caused by this dispute? If not, no one will care.

Winchester Cathedral Concert

I had an extended lunch break yesterday and attended a "Lunchtime Concert" in Winchester Cathedral. It was given by the Winchester School Orchestra and the Flute Choir. Our daughter plays in the Orchestra. A lovely concert in a great venue.

On our way home my wife, daughter and I had a coffee; a super chance to chat in different surroundings, congratulate and generally feel good about things! Aren't proud parents embarrassing !

If you are in (old) Hampshire look out for these (free) concerts - highly recommended !

Good news for Eclipse

ActiveWin.com - Father of Wiki Moves from Microsoft to Eclipse: "Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, announced on Monday that Ward Cunningham is leaving Microsoft to join the staff of the open-source tool consortium. Cunningham's new title is Director of Committer Community Development."

Eating out(side) in London

I am a bit behind in any blog entries except those sniping at other peoples comments - they are a lot easier to do!

Last week I was staying in London for a meeting. A colleague and I walked to the bank of the Thames just west of Southwark bridge, and were able to sit outside a restaurant and have dinner at 8pm in October. The weather was warm, it didn't rain, plenty of people sauntering passed, nice meal and a view of St Paul's Cathedral lit up across the weather.

It must be global warming!!

Irritating....

Yahoo! Mail: "The beta version is only available to
Yahoo! Mail users in the U.S. "

Why? Just makes me happier to stick with GMail

Missed....

I think this is an incorrect statement:Reader: "But Lisp syntax was designed 50 years ago to make it easy to parse! We don't have to optimize for this anymore -- it's time to optimize for the programmer!"

I think the point of Lisp's rather odd looking syntax is to allow for the powerful Lisp macro feature ( not to be confused with the macro systems in other langauages). There is a whole notion of blurring the (false) distinction between code and data.

Of course, how often that is useful to you will colour your opinion of the advantage:pain ratio. What is more interesting is that if you don't try this aspect, you may never realise that you needed it. "Language shapes thought"

Abuse of power

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "Ms Cameron was being hailed yesterday as Scotland’s answer to Walter Wolfgang, the 82-year-old heckler manhandled out of the Labour Party conference last month. She was arrested under the Terrorism Act for walking along a cycle path in the harbour area of Dundee."

Give more powers and they will get used .... not as originally intended.

Looking a gift cow in the mouth

BBC NEWS | UK | US rejects British Katrina beef: "The US has blocked the distribution of around 350,000 packaged meals donated by Britain for victims of Hurricane Katrina, because of mad cow disease.

US officials said the meals - routinely eaten by UK soldiers - were not considered unsafe but fell foul of its post-BSE ban on British beef products.

"

I wonder why there is a "post-BSE" ban still in place?

The youth of today

What I Did this Summer: "I think in some cases it's not so much that they lack the appetite for work, but that the work they're offered is unappetizing."

I have to agree - I think this applies at school too ( perhaps more so). How to engage, interest, challenge ( and educate) ? And I don't mean this in some elitest sense; I'm not talking about the top5% or whatever. Most kids can do a lot better in a range of areas, many of which aren't what the schools get measured on.

Competition Time: Spot the errors of fact and argument

Scripting News: 10/13/2005: "After years of maintaining absolute control over user's data in Microsoft Office, the new version promises to give total control to the user, and creates a path for developers to siphon users from Microsoft to new or specialized products. One would think that this would spawn an explosion of new products designed to please Office users but that's not what's happening. A group of large technology companies is proposing a competing set of formats, and has formed an alliance to confuse the market, and at least double the work of any developer who might want to support their products (with almost no installed base) alongside Microsoft's (with a monopolistic dominant installed base). It's not surprising that the group is lead by the detritus of the last generation of tech companies. The thriving companies, Google, Yahoo and others have the good sense to sit this time and money-waster out. "

This says it all.....

Guardian Unlimited Football | Match Reports | Football: England 1 - 0 Austria: "A performance of outstanding character swept England through to the World Cup finals. It was given by Holland....."

Jimland RPG Lives On!

Terra Incognita: The NAGS Society Website: "Huzzah! Jim Wright has graciously agreed to make Adventures in Jimland, his game of adventure and exploration in wildest Jimland, available for download. The NAGS Society will host the files on the Adventures in Jimland page. Action, romance, humor, adventure, really big beasts, and bigger guns."

Never played it - but I did enjoy some of the stories !! Glad it is still available

Disparate Separate Languages

Stuart Kent:

"So I was mildly amused to see the title printed on the menu that interpreted the acronym 'UML' as 'Universal Modeling Language'. I also noticed that alongside the UML logo on the conference program, the acronym is expanded as 'United Modeling Language'. Having experienced OMG politics at first hand during the standardization process for UML 2.0, I find the latter interpretation particularly ironic."

Wow - Google Reader

I think this will change a lot of things. I tried it - it imported an OPML file of my feeds , it loaded the feeds quickly, and of course I can use a browser based blogger client very easily.

Spotted in Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Google has jumped into the online aggregator game. That's going to impact BlogLines, I'm sure. I

Reading source code for edification, entertainment and shock value

I came across this by one of the greats:developerWorks : Blogs : Grady Booch: "I've mentioned this before, but no one bit on my comment: in universities, there are fine arts courses in reading the classics, but I've yet to see a technical course in selected readings of software source code.
"

I was somewhat surprised, given Grady's background, that the emphasis was on code rather than design ( unless he has converted to the "code is the design" way of thinking)

I certainly think the literate programming style would encourage code reading by highlighting key passages, perhaps discussing alternatives etc.

I did a quick google for "reading source code"; there were a couple of universities pointing at chunks of source code to be read. These also reminded me of the language sensitivity of the source reading approach - I have forgotten so much C that it was difficult to spot the key issues.

And I found this - perhaps this is why we don't read source code:
We Are Morons: a quick look at the Win2k source:

In the struggle to meet deadlines, I think pretty much all programmers have put in comments they might later regret, including swear words and acerbic comments about other code or requirements. Also, any conscientious coder will put in prominent comments warning others about the trickier parts of the code. Comments like "UGLY TERRIBLE HACK" tend to indicate good code rather than bad: in bad code ugly terrible hacks are considered par for the course. It would therefore be both hypocritical and meaningless to go through the comments looking for embarrassments. But also fun, so let's go.

Heresy!

Paul Graham is Wrong (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog): "Paul Graham is Wrong"

Good point James !!

Spotted in Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

If Google were actually interested in a future "sans Microsoft", you would think that their client tools would support the Mac and Linux, at least (and it says something about Sun's desperation that they were willing to appear with a vendor who will support Solaris approximately never).

Spotted in Making it stick.

WS-* usurped CORBA on the premise that the result would be simpler and better, yet years later both claims remain suspect.

Are all specs useless ( not just OPML :-) )?

Spotted in Slashdot

Linus Torvalds raised a few eyebrows (and furrowed even more in confusion) by saying "A 'spec' is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec that was both big enough to be useful _and_ accurate. And I have seen _lots_ of total crap work that was based on specs. It's _the_ single worst way to write software, because it by definition means that the software was written to match theory, not reality."

Spotted in Planet Lisp

Brad Parker emailed me to say that he has "permission from MIT to release all the LISPM source code with a "BSD like" source license". This is fabulous news as it means that, at long last, the key software components that made up the Lisp Machines will be publicly available.